RICE for PEACE

(Updated Feb. 6, 2003)

Many are now urging that we send a little bag of rice to President Bush
along with the message, "If your enemy is hungry, then feed him. --
Romans 12:20. Please send this rice to
the people of Iraq, do not attack them."

What a creative, imaginative idea this is! It's already circulating
widely on the internet. I am reproducing below one of many e-mails
I have gotten regarding this petition.

I first found out about the campaign through an e-mail from Buddhist
friends in California; then I got a similar message from a Unitarian-Universalist
Christian friend in North Carolina. I was pleasantly surprised to
find out that the whole protest had begun in my home state of Colorado.

The Bible Verse

I would add two historical notes about this campaign, one ancient,
the other modern. First, the bible verse cited is Romans 12:20.
But in that verse Paul is quoting the Jewish scriptures. The
reference is to Proverbs 25:21: "If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat;
and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink." I suggest citing
Proverbs 25:21 as well as Romans 12:20 -- there is a Jewish rationale
for this, as well as a Christian one. In fact, the Christian
reference is secondary, it is just a citation of the Jewish one.

The 1950's protest

The second issue involves the question of the prior incarnation of
this protest in the 1950's which is referred to in most internet versions of this appeal.
This prior protest was launched in the 1950's by the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. There is a quote from a book by David Albert in which he
describes bags of rice being sent to Eisenhower. The "snopes.com" web site has
an interesting analysis of this claim. They make three important
points: (1) Albert gives no footnotes or references as to how he came by
this information. (2) The Fellowship of
Reconciliation evidently did launch a campaign to send surplus wheat to China,
but it involved
sending small bags of wheat to the White House, not bags of rice.
(3) The protest was connected to the famine in China, not the possibility of war with
China, as the statements by Albert might seem to imply. On
the basis of these three points, they describe Albert's undocumented
reference to the "feed thine enemy" campaign of the 1950's as
"garbled" and reject the idea that this campaign had any
influence on Eisenhower at all (at least as of Feb. 6, 2003).

Snopes.com is right on all three points. Albert should have
documented his sources, and he has got the bags of wheat mixed up with
the bags of rice. However, the third point (the campaign was about
famine, not war), while correct, is not quite relevant -- Albert does
not actually say the campaign was directed against the war. A
close reading shows that Albert admits that the campaign was actually
about famine -- thus agreeing with snopes.com and other sources.

The source of Albert's information is Alfred Hassler, a founding
member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Hassler seems to have
most of the details of the campaign right; he refers to
"grain" rather than "rice," and spells out the
source of his information (an unnamed aide to Eisenhower) as well as the
fact that the protest was directed against famine, not war.
According to Hassler, someone
on President Eisenhower's press staff told him that the bags of grain
had influenced the decision not to go to war with China over the
Quemoy and Matsu issue. Admittedly, it does not necessarily mean
that without the bags of wheat Eisenhower would have dropped nuclear
weapons on the Chinese. However, the bags of wheat were apparently
cited in a private meeting as a reason for not going to war, so at the
least it made it easier for Eisenhower to resist the suggestion to go to
war.

Packaging the Rice

One final issue concerns the packaging of the rice, if you do decide
to protest. The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center points out that
you should package your rice carefully and if you use a padded envelope the
postage will be more than the $1.06 cited in some messages. Perhaps
you could decrease the rice to 1/3 cup, or add additional postage stamps
(four 37-cent stamps instead of three). For best results, a padded envelope is suggested; it's possible to use a
regular envelope but this might break in the Post Office's machinery.

Another solution is just to send the President the same letter, without the
rice, but with a $1 bill, telling him to send food aid to Iraq. This would avoid the post office having to sort
all of this stuff out and examine for anthrax, etc.; it would actually be
cheaper than sending the rice because you'd save on the
postage.

I've reproduced one of the several messages I've received below.

Peace,

Keith Akers

-------------------------------

Dear friends,

This is a grassroots campaign asking President Bush not to take us to war against Iraq. I hope you will
participate.

Place 1/2 c. uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-sized bag or sandwich bag work fine). Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in
a piece of paper on which you have written "If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20. Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not
attack them."

Place the note and rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or small padded mailing envelope - both are the same cost to mail) and address them
to:
President George Bush
White House - 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Three 37 cent stamps will cover the postage.

Please drop this in the mail TODAY. It is important to act now so President Bush gets the letters before Feb.5th, the date he said he is sending Colin
Powell to the U.N.

For the White House to take notice there must be hundreds of thousands of rice deliveries. We can do it if we forward this message to our friends and
family. Millions of us in this country do not believe that dropping bombs is a path to peace. Let us send Mr. Bush that message loud and clear.

There is a positive history of this protest. "In the mid 1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, learning of famine in the Chinese mainland,
launched a "Feed Thine Enemy" campaign. Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the White House with a tag quoting the Bible, "If
thine enemy hunger, feed him." As far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject failure. The President did not acknowledge
receipt of the bags publicly; certainly no rice was ever sent to China.

"What nonviolent activists learned a decade later was that the campaign played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear
war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider US options in the conflict with China over
two islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended the use of nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked how many little bags of rice had come in. When told they numbered in the
tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many were expressing interest in having the US feed the Chinese, he wasn't going to
consider nuclear weapons against them."

Please share this request with your friends, family, and communities of faith. You can send a letter
individually and also organize rice-bagging parties in your Sanghas, churches, community, or just invite your friends
over to send envelopes together.